The National Union of Healthcare Workers says some of Kaiser Permanente's practices, including at the Vallejo facility, mimic those of the beleaguered Veterans Administration and calls on the federal government to investigate.

Kaiser officials call this a cynical attempt to get in on the momentum swirling around recent disclosures about the VA.

"Patients are forced to endure lengthy wait times for appointments; falsified records that conceal these wait times; and bonuses that incentivize managers to maintain low staffing levels," they said. "One key difference between the V.A. scandal and the mental health care crisis at Kaiser is that lawsuits have demonstrated links between patient deaths and delays in care."

Kaiser Permanent spokesman John Nelson said health plan officials are familiar with and dismiss these allegations.

"We are used to the leaders of this union making discredited claims and misleading allegations about the excellent mental health care our people deliver every day," Nelson said. "It's the tactic they've chosen to use for the past four years, to apply pressure in the bargaining process, rather than engage in positive negotiations."

What's new, he said, is the attempt to gain media attention by using the VA scandal.

"Frankly, it's disgusting, and insulting to everyone who is currently affected and even hurt by the problems facing the VA," he said.

Clement Papazian, a Kaiser clinician leader who represents mental health workers in Northern California, says the problem is system-wide with waits of four to six weeks for mental health visits. "Even when they try addressing the issue, their solution is to add resources to the initial access, but by not adding more people, it pretty much prevents a second visit, because they've front-loaded the access."

Department of Managed Health Care standards indicate these patients be seen within two weeks of initial contact, he said.

The resources are going into the pockets of those at the top of this multi-billion dollar "non-profit," the 26-year Kaiser clinician said.

"They are using the same means as the VA to shortchange their clients in terms of mental health services," he said. "There have been deaths related to this (two suicides in Redwood City)."

Papazian said he hopes Kaiser will find a way to bring mental health care practices up to par with its other disciplines.

"The best we can hope for is to shine a light on the problem, which predates the problems with the VA," he said. "We hope it's a wake-up call for Kaiser to use some of it's gross amount of resources to provide higher-quality mental health services, like they do in other parts of the organization."

Union officials also said they filed a lawsuit against Covered California, which they say violated its own rules by allowing Kaiser to participate in the state health exchange despite these serious violations.

"Under the Affordable Care Act, Kaiser has added nearly a quarter million new members to its rolls, exacerbating its failures to provide timely and appropriate mental health care," union officials said.

Kaiser's John Nelson said this small union has been in "protracted negotiations with Kaiser Permanente for nearly four years. The union is repeating a series of discredited claims and misleading allegations, including exaggerating the findings from a 2012 routine survey by the California Department of Managed Health Care that have all been well addressed, and did not involve the quality of mental health care that Kaiser Permanente medical teams provide."

He insists Kaiser provides top notch behavioral and mental health care and that officials "are proud that KP Northern California's rating for behavioral health and mental health care is one of the highest in the state according to the 2014 California Office of the Patient Advocate report card."

Also, in 2013 the National Business Coalition on Health named Kaiser Northern California the top HMO health plan in the U.S. for behavioral health management, Nelson said.